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Your bottom's just above the water line sitting in a canoe, so grab your paddle and get ready to go when the green light's on. The course record is your target in Players's simulation, and you've only got a handful of minutes to beat it.

You can choose from tour courses - not simple little streams, but wild waters, full of hazards such as rocks, banks and islands. All these must be avoided and the canoe guided downstream through a series of gates, constructed of pairs of hanging posts.

Catching one of these gates can impale you helplessly while others go on to beat the record - and, adding injury to insult, touching a gate pole or missing the gate entirely gives you penalty points.

And you can capsize if you're not careful; then frantic paddling in all directions is the only way to get out of a damp, damp situation.

But it's all too easy to use up your energy by strenuous paddling. Watch the clock at the side of the screen, but also keep a careful eye on your energy level. Good paddling!

Joysticks: Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: well-defined, monochromatic, simple
Options: choice of four courses

'Riding The Rapids is a well-presented little mover, but it's so simple and unrealistic it soon gets boring. The graphics are fine- very simple, but effective - but there's hardly any gameplay. The inlay promises the action 'will have your pulse racing as fast as the current', but if you leave your canoe it just drifts downstream, hardly creating the impression of a fast-moving mountain river.'

'I've done plenty of canoeing, but never any like this. Never have I been grounded by poles hanging above the water, never have I been grounded by waves, and I certainly have never been able to dump the nose of my canoe three feet inland! Yet all these are hazards of canoeing, according to Riding The Rapids. The controls are confusing, too, with Q taking you down the screen and A taking you up -that is, if you can remember which way you are facing. Riding The Rapids is difficult and unrealistic, so give me the real river any day.'